Lost Garden. Issue 1202, 2012. The Algorithmic Experience: Portal as Art by Michael Burden, Sean Gouglas Art requires criticism. Portal transcends videogame tropes: it explores the human struggle against algorithmic processes through complex parallels between the player, Chell, the companion cube, and GLaDOS. Increasingly complex frustrations are experienced directly through the game’s aesthetic of play - a freedom bounded by algorithmic control. [more] In the Double Grip of the Game: Challenge and Fallout 3 by Sara Mosberg Iversen A broad notion of challenge, conceptualized as both demanding and stimulating situations, is here proposed as a basis for holistic analysis of digital games which takes both the games’ mechanic and semiotic dimensions into equal account.
Death Loop as a Feature by Olli Tapio Leino This essay is a critical examination of the paradigmatic approach of interpreting computer games as games accessible for analysis and critique through 'research-play'. Circles tend to return by David Myers. Changing minds and persuasion -- How we change what others think, believe, feel and do. PATV. An atomic theory of fun game design. This is the original essay in which I worked out the basics of my game grammar approach. It later became a GDC talk. This essay was written in 2004, and the genesis of it was working through issues with the crafting system in Everquest II with Rod Humble.
This essay no longer represents my current understanding of game grammar, but it’s a decent start. This essay has never been publicly posted (it was originally posted only to a private game developer forum, on June 26th of 2004), but I thought I should make it available both for historical interest and also for the sake of clarifying some of the things that I now take for granted when I discuss game design here on the blog. I can’t expect everyone to have read everything I have ever written, of course, and in this case it’s even worse since some of the material was only delivered at conferences. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the nature of fun.
Preparation is required. Preparation is required. The Designer's Notebook: Eight Ways To Make a Bad Tutorial. [In his latest Designer's Notebook column, veteran Ernest Adams takes a frank and factual look at in-game tutorials, explaining exactly what games do wrong so you can make sure that, when you set out to create your tutorial, you do it right.] In the early days of the game industry there were video games (console or arcade) and home computer games. Video games threw you into the deep end of the pool: you faced an onslaught of enemies with minimal instruction and you either sank or swam.
Mostly you sank, which is how arcade games made their money. Computer games were more complicated than arcade games, so they gave the players manuals to read before starting to play. These days we don't expect players to read manuals, so we give them tutorials instead. Recently I had the privilege of serving on the jury for the Extra Credits Innovation Awards, which meant that I had to play -- and therefore, learn to play, several games in a hurry. Force the player to take the tutorial. Square Enix's Nier.